GORDON RAYNER reports as the defence opened its case in the two-week-old trial at Southwark Crown Court, London.

In the hotseat

Ingram described his elation at making it into the 'hotseat' by winning the 'fastest finger first' qualifying contest. 'There is a huge feeling of euphoria,' he said. 'It was awesome - very difficult to explain.

'The external influences on you, you don't notice very much. You are sort of cocooned in the middle of the studio. It's dark on the outside, the lights are on you and Chris Tarrant is in front of you talking.

'Your focus is entirely on the centre there, and there is the music as well, everything is concentrated on this cocoon.'

His barrister Sonia Woodley QC asked if he was paying any attention to noises coming from the audience.

'I heard what you would expect to hear, the audience cheering, clapping. There are times when they will gasp and it's almost expected, so you hear it but I didn't hear any extraneous noise.'

Ingram had won £4,000 by the time the show, on September 9, 2001, ran out of time. He had to go back the next day, by which time Whittock had been recruited to the panel of hopefuls waiting for the next game.

The jury had previously heard of more than 30 calls between phones owned by the Ingrams and Whittock in the six months before the show.

Ingram said he had no knowledge of these calls, which he claimed were all made by his wife.

'The first time I ever became aware of Mr Tecwen Whittock was on September 25, 2001, as a result of a newspaper article,' he said.

Miss Woodley asked whether Ingram knew his wife was talking to Whittock by phone. 'No, she didn't tell me and I didn't know that was happening,' he said.

Phone records showed that a call was made from Diana Ingram's mobile to Whittock's home phone during the time that the Ingrams were at the TV studio. Another was made at 11pm on the night of Ingram's first stint on the show.

The pagers

A Series of phone calls were made from the Ingrams' mobile phones on the day of Ingram's first appearance on the show to four pagers, leaving numeric messages such as 2222.

It was suggested by the prosecution that the pagers may have corresponded to the four multiple-choice answers to each question, and that an accomplice could have paged Ingram with the right answers after listening to the questions over an open mobile phone line in the studio and looking them up at home. There was no evidence that any such plan was carried out.

Miss Woodley asked Ingram: 'It may well be suggested that you had secreted about your body four pagers. What do you say to that?'

'It's absolute rot,' replied Ingram. 'Absolute rubbish.'

Asked if he had ever used his phone to call pagers, he said: 'Most definitely and fundamentally not.'

The debts

At the time of his TV appearance, Ingram had debts of £52,520 on credit cards and loan accounts, the court heard.

Ingram, who does not own a house, said his total assets at the time were £24,364, made up mainly of savings plans.

He said his wife also had £10,000 left over from her £32,000 win on Millionaire from April 2001. The remainder of the winnings had gone on loans to her brothers (£14,000), a family holiday in Spain (£4,000), a grandfather clock bought as a memento of the win (£1,200) and the rest had 'just disappeared, as it does'.

Swotting up

Ingram said he had spent weeks swotting up on general knowledge in preparation for his appearance on the advice of his wife, who had won £32,000 on a previous show.

He said: 'I watched quiz shows and bought four or five quiz books. I also bought a history of Britain. As it happened it didn't help me at all.

'We also bought cassettes of the Romans and Greek Gods to listen to - it's a bit of a break from Harry Potter and it's good for the children.'

Family and career

After gaining a civil engineering degree, Ingram joined the Royal Engineers, with postings to Germany and within England. He and his wife married in November 1989.

He was promoted to major in October 1995 and in 1998 went to Bosnia for six months. He is currently based at Upavon, Wiltshire.

His two eldest daughters Portia, 12, and Rosie, ten, have learning difficulties. Ingram and Diana, a nursery nurse, have a third daughter, Hester, seven. The trial continues.